Deutsche Bank Goes After Whistleblower’s Son

[marmar]

from BanksterUSA:




Deutsche Bank Goes After Whistleblower’s Son
Submitted by Mary Bottari on May 20, 2011 - 15:45

By Eric Carlson, Center for Media and Democracy


In July 2008, Florida lawyer Lynn Szymoniak received foreclosure papers on her home. Szymoniak had encountered financial difficulties after spending several years caring for her ailing mother while simultaneously fighting her own health problems, and failed to re-negotiate her adjustable-rate mortgage with her lender.

But Szymoniak, a former Certified Fraud Examiner with FBI training, noticed something strange on her foreclosure documents. The company servicing her mortgage was located in Dallas, nowhere near Linda Green, the Georgia woman whose signature validated Lynn's mortgage assignment. So Szymoniak began accumulating and comparing mortgage papers from county recording offices across the country in an attempt to make sense of the bizarre documentation.

Her investigation ultimately uncovered the industry-wide practice of robo-signing: employees at document processing companies (also known as signature sweatshops) pretend to be executives at major banks, like Bank of America and Wells Fargo, to sign off on hundreds of thousands of foreclosure affidavits. According to Szymoniak's calculations, "Linda Green" appeared as an officer of at least 20 different banks and mortgage companies, accounting for almost $128 billion in mortgages. Szymoniak's work helped blow the "robo-signing" scandal wide open and illuminated the fraud plaguing the foreclosure system. Since then a variety of other illegal practices have come to light and untold thousands of consumers have been affected, generating investigations by 50 state attorneys general, U.S. Justice Department officials and regulatory agencies. Yet so far, no one has been thrown behind bars.

Discovering Green's ubiquitous signature generated dozens of lawsuits and media exposes. It made Szymoniak a hero to thousands of victims of foreclosure fraud. 60 Minutes even featured her efforts and interviewed male and female "Linda Greens" in a recent broadcast. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://banksterusa.org/content/deutsche-bank-goes-after-whistleblower%E2%80%99s-son